A few months ago, we had the blessing of re-modeling the kitchen unexpectedly. We’re huge Ikea fans, so it felt natural to visit our favorite store for inspiration.

Now, I know what you might be tempted to think. Oh, yeah. Sure. Of course it’s easy to have an organized kitchen when yours is huge and freshly remodeled with oodles of cabinet space!

Mmmm, perhaps. But if there’s one thing Ikea has taught us, it’s that thesmaller the space, the more important it is to be intentional about organization.

So here are 8 quick and fast organization tips that you can use on your current kitchen TODAY … no fancy remodel needed. 😉

And are you ready for the humorous part of this story? Just 7 months after finishing ourremodel, we are moving. My next kitchen is half the size of my current one. You can bet I’ll be employing these techniques in the weeks to come!

1. Create Functional Work Zones

Right after WWII in the 1940s, there was a big push to create kitchens with the famous “kitchen work triangle.” The idea is that the stove, fridge, and sink all need to be in a triangular shape from each other – and that “no leg of the triangle should be less than 4 feet or more than 9 feet.” There’s all sorts of other fun “rules,” too, and you can check them out on Wikipedia.

So if you find yourself in the position of re-designing a kitchen from scratch, you’ll probably want to visit these triangular-kitchen principles. But I’m not here to help you organize your kitchen someday. I want to help your kitchen TODAY!

Grab a piece of paper and think through all the tasks you do in the kitchen. Make the tasks as broad or as narrow as you want.(You may be surprised that some tasks, like sorting mail, have nothing to do with cooking. Don’t forget them, though!)

As you go through your tasks, see if you can visualize them as different zones in your kitchen.

Now, analyze your actual kitchen in its current state with these tasks.

Have you allowed yourself enough space for these tasks?

Is everything you need for a specific task in the same zone?

Are your mixing bowls close to where you do your prep work… or are they just stashed in a random cabinet because that’s where you put them five years ago?

Do you have tools for baking in three different places in your kitchen, forcing you to walk in circles? Or is everything in one spot?

Which leads me to tip #2…

2. Put Supplies for Like-Tasks Near Each Other

Keep your mixing bowls, measuring spoons and cups, whisks, spatulas, etc in the same area of your kitchen – ideally, the same cabinet. If you have the space, keep your spices nearby. (Because odds are you will be using a measuring spoon with your spices anyway.) And try to get all these items near your prep zone.

Make sure your large spoons are within arms-reach of the stove – as well as your oven mitts and pot holders/trivets.

I finally got smart and put my 8×8 and 9×13 pans next to all my baking/prepping supplies instead of on the opposite side of the kitchen. So now everything I need to make my favorite fruit custard is in one handy place. This simple organization has streamlined my time in the kitchen and made things faster.

Now, before you start protesting that it’s impossible to put your mixing bowls near your baking pans because of lack of space, let’s tackle that issue.

3. Label All Your Kitchen Tools with The Date

Grab a dry erase marker and put today’s date on your pots and pans. For things you can’t write on, grab some baggies (bonus points if they are one’s you’ve reused), write today’s date on the outside, and slip in some of your smaller tools — like carrot peelers, cheese slicers, spatulas, and other small tools that lurk in your drawers.

I used this trick to help determine which pots and pans I used the most and which ones were gathering dust in my pantry.

Whenever you use the tool, the date washes off. If you want, you can re-write the new date when you are done.

Be sure to go back and look at your dates. When was the last time you used that nifty gadget or 12-quart pot? Take note of which tools you use daily – and which ones are used weekly (or maybe just monthly). Got any tools you haven’t used in 6 months? Consider selling them in your next garage sale.

I know it seems obvious, but keep your daily tools in the easiest-to-reach places. Once-a-week tools, like a strainer for making kefir, can get tucked a little farther out of the way. Just be sure to keep it in your food-prep zone. 🙂

4. Get All Once-A-Month, Specialty Tools, and Duplicates Out Of Your Kitchen

I used to think that the kitchen was the place to house ALL of my cooking tools and gadgets. But there are some things – like a gravy boat or cupcake stand – that I only use for holidays or birthdays.

I also took stock of how many spatulas I had crammed in my drawers. I got 4 or 5 for my wedding… but in reality, I only need two in my drawer (because I’m a big fan of cooking with kids). I also had an abundance of cooking spoons. So I boxed up the extras, so they were out of the way – but still accessible in case I needed tons of utensils.

(The best part? My two spatulas are still in excellent condition. So I took the extras that have been in storage for a few years and gave them to friends. I’ve proved that I don’t need them, so there’s no more need to store them! Break yourself from the burden that you need to keep something because you can use it “someday”!)

Because kitchen cabinet space is so precious, consider boxing up these items (labeling them clearly!!) and keeping them in another place in your house.

If you’re an out-of-sight-out-of-mind person, consider writing all the contents of your box (and its storage location) on an index card and taping it inside a cabinet in your kitchen. Then, when you want to find that special pancake-mold-in-the-shape-of-a-dinosaur, you know right where to look.

If I don’t use a tool weekly, it gets stored out of the kitchen. This way when I’m hunting for my regularly-used tools, I’m not fighting over-crammed drawers.

5. Go Vertical With Your Pantry

Some houses have pantries built into the kitchen; some have pantries in a separate area. But whether your pantry is in the kitchen (or two rooms away, in my case), you can benefit from going vertical with your storage items.

Consider putting nuts, seeds, dried fruit, sugar, flour, oats, beans, rice, and other dried goods in glass jars. Not only will this help keep out pantry moths and other nefarious bugs, it will create a clean look and help keep bags from falling over and spilling. We keep all our dried goods in glass jars rather than flat, low bags or extra-wide storage containers.

6. Group Your Spices Together

Make sure ALL your spices are in one location. For YEARS I used to have some on the counter, some in a drawer, and some in a cabinet. Finally, I got smart and they are all in one location.

Be sure to label the TOPS of the jars, so you can find what you need quickly when you are looking down on them.

If you keep spices on a shelf, consider keeping them in a basket so you can pull out the whole thing out and not strain to reach what is in the back. Nothing is worse than playing Spice Jar Dominoes. You know we’ve all done it…

Remember, you can always write the month and year on your spices jars to prevent guessing which decade you last used that mustard powder. 🙂

7. Use Drawer Dividers and Containers

To keep things neat and tidy (and give everything a place), use dividers and containers to help group your items.

We keep all of our sharp items in one drawer and use dividers to keep those items separate.

Use plastic containers to help group your measuring spoons. Put your scissors and carrot peelers in a bin together. Use a shoebox for larger tools, like ice cream scoops and small strainers.

And don’t forget bins for the “missing socks” of the kitchen – lids, mason jar rings, and storage container tops. Ugh. Seriously. How does this happen?

8. Radically Evaluate Everything In Your Kitchen

We weren’t expecting to replace our whole kitchen when it happened. It was an unexpected situation. We were without a functional kitchen from the first week of September until after Thanksgiving — and the sink and floor didn’t get finished until Christmas.

Obviously, our family needed to eat.

So as I packed up EVERYTHING in my kitchen, I kept out my bare-bones emergency supplies. One mixing bowl. One spatula. One tablespoon and one teaspoon measurer. One 8×8 pan. One carrot peeler. One cutting board. One knife.

These were some of the basics I knew I would need to make eating happen around our home.

And you know what it taught me?

I can get by with less than I think I need.

When we’re working in our kitchens, nothing is worse than unwanted (expensive!) clutter that is in the way. Rummaging around is a secret time-bandit in our lives. So in the effort of streamlining our workspaces, evaluate what is absolutely mission-critical to your needs.

Pretend you are going on a trip to a beautiful condo on an island for a month. What would you take with you? Consider putting those absolutely necessary things on your counter. Then, look at everything that is left.

Do you really need it?

Is it worth storing?

Is it worth the time it takes to shuffle things around it?

If you do need it (just not urgently), where can you move it to make space for the more important things?

If you answered “no” or “not sure” to any of these questions, consider tucking these items away in another location and see if you miss them. Again, keep only the MOST important things in the important places of your kitchen.

Organization vs. Maintenance

By the way, can I just say right now that there is a HUGE difference between organization and maintenance? These two skills NEED to go hand in hand. You can get as organized as you want, but if you don’t keep up with it, disaster can happen. So, even us organized types have days like this…

Plea from Katie: how do people figure out where to put NEW things they get that they never had before? For example, when I got my two huge tubs of Vital Proteins gelatin, not only did I want to make sure I integrated them into meals often and didn’t forget about them, but I also didn’t know WHERE to put them? How to figure out stuff like that without reorganizing the entire kitchen, or at least the shelf? I end up with so much on the counter on a daily basis, Bethany’s picture above looks like a good day at our house! Help!

My Future Kitchen

As I mentioned at the beginning of this article, these 8 principles work for any size kitchen. In a few days (with God’s grace), this will be my new home base… and I’m beginning to get excited.

My smaller space just means I get to be more intentional with more organization. I’m brainstorming my zones and giving myself grace and time to figure it out. Hey, we get to do this organization journey together! So jump over to the comments and let us know which tip you plan to work on first. Because if there’s one thing I know, it’s that the KS community loves to help inspire and encourage each other.

What do your kitchen work zones look like? Do you have other tricks and tips for streamlining life in the kitchen? Tell us in the comments below!

About Bethany Wright (Contributing Writer)

Bethany lives in Ohio with her wonderful husband, delightful 8-year-old daughter, and adorable 5-year-old son. When she’s not busy making a disaster in the kitchen, she enjoys taking all-day cycling excursions with her family and reading books. She comes from a long line of cooks, including ancestors who were chefs to German nobility. Despite her chops in the kitchen, she is completely unskilled at vegetable gardening. (Her consolation is knowing that in a zombie apocalypse, her role would be the town baker and not farmer.) A long-time KS reader, Bethany is thankful for Kitchen Stewardship's baby-steps and Monday Missions that have completely transformed her family’s life. Bethany blogs regularly at WoodhavenPl.com

Oh my gosh. I hate my kitchen. It is not a triangle at all but rather a line. A horrible non functional line and this has inspired me to take over my kitchen and figure out a better solution. We are a large family and the kitchen is the heart of it. We have no drawers. I cannot believe someone could have a kitchen without drawers! We have 3 small shallow drawers which really limits storage. I will be starting by moving all my baking stuff closer to my stove. I’ve been simplifying but we still have no storage space for pots and pans. I’m fairly sure the people who used to live here never cooked. EVER. Thank you for the post!

Can you hang pots and pans on hooks on the wall? I have friends whose kitchen is linear–like a hallway with all the appliances on one side–and their main strategy has been to make use of the wall facing the appliances to hang things that go with each appliance or with the “mixing area”.

Great post! I will definitely start to think in terms of “zones” and try to rearrange my kitchen accordingly. Never thought about it that way before. Also, wanted to mention that I have been living out of a couple of boxes of supplies in my current kitchen (the size of your new one) for going on 2 years now! Everything else is downstairs in storage… we bought this foreclosure and have the kitchen done about half way. (Takes longer than you think, right?) In any case, I, too, have learned how little I really need to function in my kitchen. There are things I miss, but there are definitely things that will be donated or passed to others when I am finally able to unpack those boxes. =)

Thank you thank you thank you! My kitchen has been driving me crazy lately and even when I have the inspiration to cook, I often don’t have the emotional energy to deal with the crazy in there. I have plenty of space, I just feel like none of it makes any sense. But now, I feel like I have answers and a plan for goring after it. As I read your post I began to see how I could move a zone over to another, less used, spot and make things much more effective and easier to use, not to mention keep organized down the road. I’m the worst at maintenance so that’s going to be my biggest struggle.

Interestingly enough, I use many of these techniques naturally. Maybe it’s the organizer in me or the I want what I want/need when I want/need it in the kitchen. Or maybewe keep our kitchen relatively simple overall. I don’t go for many gadgets and just have a couple knives for cutting & slicing. I would like to do a little something different with one counterspace area, but it’s where we keep our filtered water jugs for now, so I make do around it.

These are great tips though and I could definitely use some dividers containers in a few drawers! 🙂

i try to do these things already, but i am with katie, i keep finding new foods to add to our diet, but they don’t fit into the kitchen. I have a cupboard for sprouting and kombucha, but then started adding fermented vegetables to my life, and can’t figure out where to store them. It’s crazy how many raw ingredients i have, and there is, always something new. The kids are back in school, where do i store lunch boxes and the accompanying containers. Sometimes i think I’ve got simplicity and green living confused and i can’t figure it how to make them work together.

Great post! I also ADORE lazy susans for spices. I have 3 of them and can quickly access any number of spices, I think I have about 15 jars on each one. They are in shelves right by the stove – not perfectly ideal because of the steam, but so so handy while cooking.

Part of the way I set up my kitchen was also based on the toddler factor – heavy things and pots and bowls are lower – as I don’t mind those being pulled out, while glass and containers and sharp tools are higher.

counters should be 2′ 6″ wide to allow an extra 6″ to store things on the counter against the wall. jars, measuring cups, etc. my two cents on kitchen design. i have one knife i use 99% of the time. i keep another bigger one to cut squashes and watermelon but i could use that one knife if needed. if we made bread, i’d keep a serrated knife too. O.N.E. knife, ppl. even in a foodie-kitchen its possible 🙂

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